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Tuesday, 3 November 2015

At the moment a lot of my time is spent on the two big projects "Drakar och Demoner" (the classic swedish roleplaying game) and "Nordiska Gudar" (my book about the norse gods). However, sometimes one feels the need to take a break from drawing burly gods and daring adventurers and do something completely different...

Enter "Första Urtidsboken" (My first Book of Prehistoric Creatures). This will be my fourth picture book and a sort of companion volume to the one about dinosaurs that came out this spring. Instead of everyones favourite giant reptiles this book will focus on the the amazing creatures that superseded them.

For someone like me, with a life-long passion for paleontology, getting the chance to draw saber-toothed cats, mammoths and other forms of Cenozoic megafauna is simply a dream come true.

Here´s some of the finished pices. The book itself will be out this spring.

SMILODON

TERROR BIRD

WOOLY RHINO

While the illustrations in these books are rather stylised I still try to keep them as anatomically and scientifically correct as possible. I´ve taken a lot of inspiration from classic paleo-art masters like Charles R. Knight and Zdenêk Burian as well modern illustrators like Peter de Séve who did the wonderful designs for the Ice Age movies (though I´ve made a conscious effort to distance myself from that look).

This research results in lots of preliminary sketches of the various extinct critters as I try to get a feel for them. As there´s only room for nine different animals, not all of them can make it into the final book. Fortunately this blog has no such restrictions so at least I can show off the sketches here:

MUGSHOT

ABOUT

My name is Johan Egerkrans and I´m a Swedish illustrator and concept artist living in Stockholm.

Drawing has always been part of my life - at age two I picked up a pencil and haven´t been able to put it down ever since.

I´ve worked as a professional illustrator for more than fifteen years producing art for books, games, comics and films.More recently I´ve also written and illustrated the popular book "Nordiska Väsen" about scandinavian folklore and three picture books about dinosaurs, monsters and stuff.

On this blog I will post illustrations, information about new books and events, plus the odd sketch. Hope you enjoy!

For questions, praise, hatemail or donations of large sums of cash me drop me a line at johan@egerkrans.com